Quite often I read posts on Facebook, or hear in camera clubs, from folk who loudly and proudly proclaim that the photographs that they show on here ARE STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CAMERA AND HAVE BEEN NOWHERE NEAR EDITING SOFTWARE! It is as if they have to prove some point or other and almost as if no-one ever, in the world, processed their work in a darkroom or a photo lab. I have shown below a shot I took in the Brecon Beacons yesterday; one untouched and in its RAW format, and the other, processed to bring the shot to life. RAW, […]

One of the conversations I often have with clients/friends is what is so special about RAW? Well, this is a personal choice – to shoot in RAW or .jpeg format – but for my work I will try and explain why RAW is my choice most of the time. RAW is one of the available ‘quality’ settings on the camera which you can set and the camera/sensor/processors then accepts the image given and does minimal editing or tweaking to the shot. In other words, the image is RAW not ‘cooked’ – whereas the .jpeg setting DOES edit. It adjusts colour, removes redundant […]

A good friend of mine, and a keen photographer, is very fond of the square presentation. I have always advocated looking hyper-critically at your own work to see if it might benefit from a crop but to be sure I hadn’t really ‘got my head around’ the square presentation. The working ratios of most cameras give a fixed format which generally looks good and works well. So what better reason to have a change? I have offered up here a shot as taken from the camera, of a swirl pattern in the sand of a nearby beach, spotted and shot […]